Witches and ghost hunters gather in Salem

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Witches and ghost hunters gather in Salem
April 18, 2009
By Chris Cassidy
The Salem News

SALEM — You've heard of Christmas in July. This is Halloween in April.

Dozens of witches, psychics and ghost hunters are in town this weekend for two separate conventions at the Hawthorne Hotel, where such topics as "common sense approaches to paranormal investigations" and "pagans in global action" will be discussed.

GhoStock 7 — a four-day convention for paranormal investigators — kicked off Thursday with opening remarks from local witch Christian Day. Yesterday, Illinois-based Witch School International began hosting "three days of Wicca, Witchcraft and High Ritual."

They've come from places like Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Louisville to be here.

In the basement of the Hawthorne Hotel yesterday, GhoStock 7 (billed as "four days of spooks, spectres and spirits") was in full swing. The four-page itinerary included lectures on some of the South's most haunted locations and an overview of ghost-hunting equipment, such as instrumental transcommunication.

"It's a national event for sure," said organizer Patrick Burns, the one-time host of TruTV's "Haunting Evidence."

Keith Age, the host of "Spooked" on the Sci Fi Channel, took an interest in the paranormal after he said an unexplained force tossed him about 6 feet through a doorway when he was 16 years old, leaving a bruise running from his wrist to his elbow.

He said there's been a sudden ghost-hunting craze since the year 2000.

"Everybody wants to know what else is out there," Age said.

"What we've found in the paranormal world is that since 9/11 more and more people are seeking answers outside the normal," said David Schrader of Minnesota, who hosts his own paranormal radio show.

The highlight of GhoStock was expected to come last night, when small groups of conventioneers planned to embark on their own ghost hunts, investigating local hot spots like Fools' Mansion, the Lyceum and the Hawthorne Hotel's own basement.

This morning, they're expected to present their findings to the group.

On a laptop screen, author Marley Gibson showed off a photo she took while on a recent investigation at the Buttonwoods Museum in Haverhill that contains an unexplained image inside an attic.

"Someone said, 'I feel something,'" and I took a picture and there's this weird thing in the picture," Gibson said.

At the witches conference, guests plan to sit down at a luncheon today and order off the "Bewitched Menu," containing the same items served during the filming of the Salem episodes of the TV show "Bewitched" nearly 40 years ago.

These include: stuffed peacock eggs (deviled eggs), breast of red-necked wallaby (sliced sirloin with mushroom sauce) and sea serpent a la Bourguignon (pasta with julienne vegetables).

Both conferences run through tomorrow.

"People had been asking me for years when we'd be doing a paranormal conference in Salem," Burns said.